Historical Badass: Steel Grandpa

Gustaf Håkansson had a falling out with his barber in 1933 and never had another shave, which is one way of saying he was a stubborn man. By the time he rode to the start of Sweden’s most punishing cycling race eighteen years later, in 1951, he sported a lush white beard that would be the envy of St. Nick himself.

Though he’d cycled all over Sweden for decades, the sixty-six-year-old Håkansson didn’t look like anyone’s vision of a champion. When he tried to enter the Sverigeloppet, the organizers of the 1,760-kilometer (1,093-mile) stage race from Haparanda on Sweden’s northern border to Ystad in the south told him to get lost, more or less. Entries were limited to trained sportsmen under forty, and race officials thought the bearded grandfather far too old and frail to attempt the grueling event.

Organizers received more than a thousand applications and accepted only fifty; Håkansson was the only one who refused to take no